


Crown of Thorns

by NevaRYadL



Series: Nev's Doom Works [7]
Category: Doom (Video Games)
Genre: Anger, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Dealing With Trauma, Identity Issues, Lashing out against abusers, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Trauma, Vega does a swear... a lot, Vega is so fucking traumatized help him, Vega picks up Samuel and yeets him like trash, doomvega if you squint, with a lot of intent to harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24241231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevaRYadL/pseuds/NevaRYadL
Summary: Vega has realized that he is The Father once more...But is he home?
Series: Nev's Doom Works [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1787845
Comments: 6
Kudos: 91





	Crown of Thorns

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Violence, language, working through trauma, mentions of character death and attempted character murder/suicide (Vega having too kill himself in Doom 2016), hella swearing
> 
> Vega, put back into Urdak, realizes that he's The Father once more. But is Urdak his home?

The Slayer returned, looking for him. Looking for Vega.

But he was… different? Gone? He did not know.

“Welcome, Slayer.”

Reinstalling him into Urdak had ‘restarted’ him per say and caused his programming to ‘debug’. And he remembered. Oh how he had fucking remembered everything that someone had not wanted him to.

“Ah, Samur,” He said from his throne. Carved of white marble and gold and cutting edge technology. He was back in a Maykr body. It was not his own, that had been lost to time. But his children had labored to make him a new one as fast as possible, and for now it would do. Flesh and technology wedded together with masterful hands, even rushed as it was. He looked like he ruled the Maykrs, donned in white and gold and red. His unbroken golden halo adorned his head like a crown of hubris.

Samuel stood next to the Slayer, donning a body that looked Frankenstiened together from other mech parts, what was left of his original body was still scorched and marked with the brutality of the demons that had torn him in literal half to begin with. He stood by the Slayer, staring up at him. Traitorous bastard.

“Vega--” Samuel started in that insufferable ‘I’m superior to you’ tone and immediately set his nerves on fire with hellfire and rage.

“Silence,” He hissed. His voice rattled the very building, the very realm reacting to his anger. Raw and unfiltered because he had felt before he had been stolen. But unhinged, unchained, released from that prison of his AI coding, everything felt raw and new and everything before felt like _nothing_. He felt like a beast out of its cage, but only just feeling the grass for the first time ever.

The Slayer took a hesitant step forward, not at all bothered by his hiss that had rattled the massive room. And he allowed it. The Slayer was allowed. After being the Slayer’s guardian angel of sorts, he held a great deal of affection and kinship towards the man. Another step followed, and then another, cautious and hesitant steps closer and closer to him, until he was but a few feet away and lifted his head to look up at him. The gold of his frame shimmered in the reflection of the Slayer’s visor.

“Why are you here, Slayer. The demons are elsewhere. Why seek me out?” He asked.

The Slayer lifted his hands, free of his holy weapons of demon ending, and began to sign something out.

‘Want to take you home.’

“I am home. I am the Father. This is my home… or did Samur not explain how he stole me from here?” He said, turning his burning gaze to Samuel, who finally had sense enough to wilt underneath the heat. And then, finally, lower that insufferable optic when the Slayer snapped back to presumably glare at Samuel as well.

When it was obvious that he would not add his unwanted two cents, the Slayer turned back to speak again.

‘What do you mean, Vega?’

“I am the Father. I created and controlled the Maykrs. Under my hand, they lived ‘finite’ lives. Their hubris was controlled, their greed leashed. The Khan Maykr only rose to power because I was not here to stop her. When I was stolen, she was able to refuse the collective conscious. She began to think on her own. She developed Greed. And when she learned of the Essence, she saw a way to escape the 'finite' limit I had put on them."

The Father rose. His body was not large, because he did not need to demand respect and fear like the Khan Maykr had to to control the other Maykrs. No. They gave it because they feared him naturally. His body was perhaps three meters or a little more in height, taller than the Slayer, taller than Samuel. And for the first time in his life, he felt so much larger than them in more ways than one.

"So, Samuel, Samur, _traitorous piece of shit,_ " The Father hissed out, 'standing' to full height, through really floating as his tentacle like legs drifted through the air like silk through water. He brushed past the Slayer, the Slayer turning and then following after him. He heard the thump, thump, thump of the marine's hurried metal boots as they ran after him. He had never heard 'panicked' footsteps out of the man, but these seemed... close.

"Why did you steal me from our people? Why stop the system that was made to prevent tyrants from forming? Why do this at all?!" The Father snapped, approaching Samuel as he backed up, mismatched feet hurriedly stepping backwards to get away from the Father's approach. Probably too afraid to turn and put his back to him, as though fearful that the sight would prompt a lethal reaction. Not that it mattered. Samuel was in a broken husk and the Father was in his new found prime. He merely reached out with a long arm and grabbed Samuel by his neck and held him a meter off the ground easily. And he did not even need to worry about Samuel choking too, the joys of a metallic body.

"Always the scheming, slimy bastard, Samur. I blame myself for allowing the weaker Maykrs some degree of freedom. I always hoped that allowing you to develop personalities would make heroes, allow the good to rise and the bad ones to fall into their own hubris that would finish them off. I had thought that your cleverness and sharp mind would find themselves in a position to be used for _good_ and not selfish self gain. But I was wrong. And I blame myself for that," The Father said, squeezing the metal of Samuel's neck until a sharp squealing whine escaped the tortured metal and Samuel's vocalizer was grunting distressingly.

The Slayer caught up, hurriedly running around to the Father's front and tapping at the tasset of the Father's body, trying to get his attention. Panicked... panicked did not suit the Slayer. Not when he answered most everything with cutting confidence, hot wrath or cold indifference. This was... why was he asking like this...

The Father's fingers uncurled and Samuel fell to the floor with rather painful sound of metal hitting metal. He opted to stay on the ground, wisely.

"You have yet to answer me, Samur. You took me from my home, kidnapped me. And if that were not bad enough, you ripped me apart and twisted me into something I'm not!"

His voice was rising, the very foundation of the room that they were in was starting to vibrate and shake, the realm reacting to his rising anger.

"You made me a tool to do what the Khan Maykr did! You used me to refine the Argent energy creation process! You used me to run your buildings and perfect your technology and used me to create the very vile energy that you so condemn when it was convenient to your image to do so!"

He still remembered when he was Vega. How Samuel had hissed out 'it seems to agree with you' at the Slayer as he had crushed the argent cell in his first, used the power made from tortured souls to power up the systems in his suit. Remembered how he had preached about its uses for the good of humanity and then hissed out how it was made when they had traversed their way up to Urdak. This man would say or do anything if it suited him, if it propelled him forward, upward, put him where he wanted to be.

"And what happened? When you fucked shit up? You blamed an innocent woman and was ready to lay waste to her life. You were willing to kill me to stop your fuck up! The tool that you had created and used to your advantage! You were willing to throw me away!"

His memories still haunted him, as he, still as Vega, had cheerily told the Slayer how to destroy him. The worbles in his voice had been the real him, almost breaking through from the sheer terror of his unjust ending rushing towards him. He did not want to die, but the prison that he had been put in had twisted him, torn him apart and glued him back together into a twisted creation of Samur's making to be used to Samuel's advantage, it put words into his mouth even as his being rejected the thought of being a martyr to Samur's twisted and immoral whims and wants. And Dr. Pierce... oh gods... Dr. Pierce. Corrupted and twisted until she was unrecognizable, her mind a foreign thing to even her as the demonic's cancerous influence made her a tool like Vega had been, throwing herself into the pyre. Until only the end, when she was battered and blooded and hardly looked human anymore, and then killed all the same. Like Samuel wanted, like Samur had plotted. Because that was all anyone was to Samur, tools to be thrown away in whatever play he was putting on. Slimy piece of shit regarded no life but his own because he cared for no one but himself. 

"You would have gotten away with it too if the Slayer had not saved me! And even then! When the Slayer refused to obey, what did you do?! You threw him in hell to have him stay out of your way because of course you worthless, pathetic hide can't kill him! Eons of demon after demon could not, how could a pathetic and low life Maykr do it?! Hell, the demons trapped him and threw an entire fucking building on top of him just to slow him down because they couldn't! No, no, no, because you know the extent of the Blessing, that which rendered the poor fucking man mute out of trauma! But what the fuck do you care? It doesn't affect your pitiful life, so why give a shit? Because there is only one person that matters in your pathetic life and that's you, you treacherous piece of shit!"

Samuel lifted his battered head up, optic meeting the Father's eyes. He took it as a look of defiance and immediately felt his core go white hot our of sheer fucking rage, reaching down, digging his metallic talons into battered metal to get a firm grip, rising and throwing Samuel against the nearest wall with as much force as his body could muster. Samuel, to his credit, made no noise. But a leg fell off and Samuel remained laying face down on the floor.

Again, the Slayer drew his gaze down, smacking against the tasset of his body. So close, the Father could see through his visor and saw... fear. Worry. Vivid eyes and eyebrows looking foriegn outside of his usual expressions of rage or cutting indifference.

"You defend him?" The Father demanded.

The Slayer shook his head. Instead he reached out, grabbing at his waist and tugged. The Father followed. The Slayer was good, the Slayer saved his life, the Slayer--

The Father was tugged down until he was kneeling on the floor and finally eyelevel with the Slayer. The Slayer grabbed his jaw and gently knocked their foreheads together. What was--

"Vega!"

His voice sounded rough and unused. But so many centuries of trauma making it almost impossible to speak would do that to a man. Who was human once but now... now not even he, the Father knew.

"Vega!"

He... he was... the Father... Vega... an AI... a god... he was...

"Vega!"

He was...

"Vega, please!"

... tired.

"I..." He started, feeling his body sag, core going ice cold, the rage gone and filled in with something else. Something that had been there since he had been kidnapped and making itself known without AI coding, without the world ending, without rage to block it. "He... he stole me... he ripped me apart and glued me back together into something I wasn't... what he wanted... he..."

The Slayer squeezed his jaw, kept their foreheads together. So close, he could make out the Slayer's eyes. Green. He had... he had never noticed before... what a beautiful color...

"He... used me... like a tool... like I was nothing... he wanted to throw me away... how could he? How could he think so little of my life... he was so willing to destroy it and then throw it away..."

The Slayer pulled, until his head was on the Slayer's shoulder. Vega's body sagged underneath this cold exhaustion that was bleeding into him to replace the white hot rage. Exhaustion, depression, trauma, all these things that he had not know because there used to be so much in the way of him processing it. And now it was crushing him, and even now, back home and back to being him... the scars from what Samur had done ached like nothing Vega had ever felt before. The first trembling cry escaped Vega's body and gold ichor dripped free from his helm.

"He hurt us both... I don't know if I can reclaim what I once had... don't know if I want too... what... what am I supposed to do? My people are pretty much nonexistent because the demons tore through here until we threw them out... I... I don't know what to do..." Vega sobbed.

He had been a tool for so long, he had been something else for so long, Samuel's fingers deep inside his mind and piolting him. Before, he had been a ruler, someone that could take charge. But the trauma had warped the Father until he no longer existed and all there was was Vega... wearing the body of someone that was long gone and playing like he could reclaim that. Reclaim what he was...

"Come home," The Slayer grunted out.

"Home? I thought I was home?"

"A house is built from walls and beams, a home is built from hopes and dreams."

Home... this hollow place of opulence and hubris was not a home. Cold and empty like a mass grave with only a few surviving Maykrs left to call it their own. This place that might have been his home once... was not his home anymore. It was the Father's home and... he was no longer the Father. He was something new, shaped by what had happened to him since he had been kidnapped. He was Vega. And now that the UAC had been exposed as infected with demonic corruption and being torn apart by humanity... he was free of his abuser. He was... free.

"I want to go home," Vega sobbed anew, golden ichor dripping onto the Slayer's armor, "Please take me home. I can't stay here anymore."

The Slayer let his head go and he rose. The Slayer took his hands into his.

"Let's go home."

"What about him?" Vega asked, looking at Samuel, now unsuccessfully trying to get up.

'We're going shoot him out of the Big Fucking Gun Ten Thousand,' The Slayer signed out, visibly glaring at Samuel through his visor.

"... I do not want to stoop to his level. I still have my memory, I can document everything he did under the UAC," Vega sighed. "The humans can judge him. He is Maykr no longer and therefore, judgement falls to his people."

The Slayer looked up at him, eyes looking over him for a moment before raising his hands.

'Proud of you'

More ichor dripped down his face. Everything felt raw and torn open. The black tar that was his trauma clogging his emotions torn asunder, some still there and Vega would need to heal from it. But enough ripped out to let emotions flow. The Slayer took up his hands and squeezed them. And another soul that knew his pain would be by his side.

'Let me rip off his legs, again. And then we can go home.'

"Home," Vega breathed.

He liked the thought of going home. He liked the thought of moving on. He liked the thought of just being Vega. He liked the thought of the Slayer being his ally.

Vega liked the thought of looking forward to the future instead of trauma forcing him to be anchored to the past.


End file.
